1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a system and method for maximum benefit routing of telephone inquiries. More particularly, the invention relates to a system and method of routing of telephone calls based on identified caller goals and the cost and/or benefit of routing the call to a customer care call center best equipped to respond to the needs of the caller.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telephonic inquiries have become commonplace, and commercial entities that receive many inquiries use automated systems to answer questions or route the call to an appropriate operator. Commercial entities include telephone companies, cable TV providers, long distance telephone providers, public utilities and credit card companies. In many instances the automated phone system presents the calling party with a self-routing option via touch-tone menus, for example, by asking the caller to select a choice by depressing numbers on the caller's telephone keypad. Sometimes the caller may be confronted with the choice of depressing a number on the keypad or saying the number. The routing system recognizes the tone associated with the depressed number on the keypad, or the vocalized number, and routes the call according to preprogrammed instructions.
These simple routing systems work well when the number of routing choices is below 5. As the number of choices increases, multi-tiered menus become necessary. However, callers generally do not like multi-tiered menus, and may be confused by the choices. Accordingly, the percentage of successful routings decreases as the number of routing choices increases. That is, when faced with a multi-tiered menu system, users frequently have trouble mapping their concerns to the menu choices presented. Thus, callers are less likely to be successfully routed, and in the majority of cases, the call will be either terminated without the caller having received the desired benefit from placing the call or the call will be defaulted to an operator for disposition.
Additionally, self-routing via touch-tone menus can be confusing and dangerous for mobile phone users. The use of mobile phones requires that users focus their visual attention on the handset in order to navigate the phone menu, and not on the driving environment.
Other techniques include using a topic spotter to route the caller based on spoken responses to a general prompt, where a caller is presented with a simple greeting such as “How may I help you?” The caller responds with a natural speech statement of the caller's objective, and the system attempts to classify the caller's request into one of a number of predefined objective routings, or to an operator if the request did not fit one of the predefined routings or if the system was unable to understand the caller's request. These systems have the limitation of only taking into account caller preference, and force fit a caller's preference into one of the predefined routings.
These systems do not take into account the cost or benefits to a call center in maximizing the correct routing of a call. When a call is correctly routed, for example, to the best person qualified to answer the query, or to the call center best equipped to respond to the query, the overall cost to respond to the caller decreases while simultaneously increasing caller satisfaction. Accordingly, there is a need for a maximum benefit routing system and method that allows for the separation of the caller's goals from those of the call center.